On October the 12th, 2016, Professor Richard James from the University of Melbourne presented about a project titled The Academic Workforce 2025 that was funded by the Australian Government's Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT).

During the presentation Professor James raised questions about what the professionalisation of the academic workforce might look like. This was informed by an analysis of how a 'profession' is recognised and reinforced in other disciplines and a subsequent observation that currently university teaching (and more holistically speaking, 'academic work') is not systematically recognised and reinforced via the common mechanisms adopted by other professions.

In the spirit of continuing the 'national conversation' we encourage conference participants to watch some or all of Professor James' presentation and then respond to the discussion question either by leaving a comment below or a response to another comment.

The question posed is:

In order to better meet the combined needs of students, staff and the University as we move toward 2020, what are some of the things that you would like to see happen in relation to the academic workforce?

On October the 12th, 2016, Professor Richard James from the University of Melbourne presented about a project titled The Academic Workforce 2025 that was funded by the Australian Government's Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT).

During the presentation Professor James raised questions about what the professionalisation of the academic workforce might look like. This was informed by an analysis of how a 'profession' is recognised and reinforced in other disciplines and a subsequent observation that currently university teaching (and more holistically speaking, 'academic work') is not systematically recognised and reinforced via the common mechanisms adopted by other professions.

One of Professor James' main points, as outlined in the five minute segment between 32:36 and 37:25 is that we "haven't reinvented the academic workforce for the present times".

In the spirit of continuing the 'national conversation' we encourage conference participants to watch some or all of Professor James' presentation and then respond to the discussion question either by leaving a comment below or a response to another comment.

The question posed is:

In order to better meet the combined needs of students, staff and the University as we move toward 2020, what are some of the things that you would like to see happen in relation to the academic workforce?

On October the 12th, 2016, Professor Richard James from the University of Melbourne presented about a project titled The Academic Workforce 2025 that was funded by the Australian Government's Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT).

During the presentation Professor James raised questions about what the professionalisation of the academic workforce might look like. This was informed by an analysis of how a 'profession' is recognised and reinforced in other disciplines and a subsequent observation that currently university teaching (and more holistically speaking, 'academic work') is not systematically recognised and reinforced via the common mechanisms adopted by other professions.

In the spirit of continuing the 'national conversation' we encourage conference participants to watch some or all of Professor James' presentation and then respond to the discussion question either by leaving a comment below or a response to another comment.

The question posed is:

In order to better meet the combined needs of students, staff and the University as we move toward 2020, what are some of the things that you would like to see happen in relation to the academic workforce?

In this session students from the Bachelor of Design (Digital Media) will present their works from second and third year studio classes.

Additionally, we will talk about our experience at RMIT University and how we see that as contributing to our future plans.

Works include:

The R Word – Becca Callahan

Showreel – Sam Malcolm

Mooncake Branding – Ly Luu

Bridesmaids x Contagion – David Heath

Lady Gaga Animation – Antony Linden

TBC – Sarah Skotnicki

3d Environment – Nadia Joyce

App Design Video – Edwin Ang Ding Hou

Streamlining data: xAPI and the LRS

Peter Saunders, Cathy Leahy, Mark Smithers and Jonathon Belotti.

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

xAPI or Experience API is a standard for describing online behaviours. When working across multiple online learning systems it enables learning analytics that are consistently comparable across the systems. Using a learning record store (LRS) we will show how we have been using xAPI to create coherent and meaningful analytics that can be fed back to students.

How do sequence changes in curriculum design impact on teaching and learning practice?

Hans Tilstra

College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University

Presentation:

What happens when we change sequence of what we offer in our course and program design? A growing number of RMIT programs we are trialling the ‘flipping’ or inverting teaching sequences. In 2012 Wineburg and Schneider recommended the inverting of Bloom’s taxonomy. Tillema (1999) found considerable differences in teacher training comparing ‘immersion in practice’ compared to more incremental models. These are examples where the content of courses and programs is reframed by changes in sequence.

Yet, the ‘building’ metaphor in curriculum is pervasive. RMIT’s ‘future career’ model suggests that first year is a time to explore options, the middle of a program should be about experience, and the capstone of a program should be about engaging with one’s career. Some universities challenge first year students to work on projects, rather than wait for the theoretical ‘foundation’ to be established.

In this workshop you are invited to join the discussion on optimal sequence in curriculum design. You’ll gain

– exposure to research findings on optimal sequence

– an opportunity to test implications for your discipline, program or course if sequenced optimally

– opportunities to discuss issues of concern

Bio:

Hans Tilstra is a Senior Coordinator Learning and Teaching in the College of Science, Engineering and Health. His research interests include optimal sequence narratives in program design.

Inclusive teaching for diverse genders, sexes and sexualities

Alisha Taylor-Jones

Equity and Diversity Unit, RMIT University

Presentation:

In this presentation there will be an introduction to what is covered by diverse Genders, Sexes, and Sexualities (as per the new RMIT Strategic Plan and Diversity and Inclusion Framework), the use of inclusive language in interactions and teaching, and look at examples of how to adapt current practices in assessment and activities used in teaching to acknowledge the diversity in our community.

Key Outcomes from the session…

– What diversity do we have at RMIT along the gender, sex, and sexuality spectrums?

– What language is appropriate and inclusive of these people in our community?

– How can I make my teaching more inclusive, respectful, and representative of the broader ranges of experience?

Bio:

Alisha Taylor-Jones

Alisha works in the Equity and Diversity Unit here at RMIT as the Advisor; Diversity and Inclusion. A large portion of her work is around advising on changes to university systems, policies, and procedures to foster better inclusion of LGBTIQA+ (or Diverse Genders, Sexes, and Sexualities – DGSS) staff and students, and also around supporting students from refugee backgrounds.
Alisha holds a Masters in Gender and Development from the University of Melbourne.

Student generated website

Stephanie Holt

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

Stephanie Holt requested support from the College to develop a project that would position and connect graduates with professional opportunities. It was decided that a website would be needed to showcase and archive works, along with curriculum activities that help to strengthen graduate online presence, connectedness, and portfolios.

Stephanie Holt teaches professional writing and has been instrumental in establishing a website for students to publish their works.

ready for life and work…really?

Panel Information

Moderated by Dr Marcus Powe. Features a range of undergraduate and post-graduate students.

Academic Integrity: What are the issues?

Barbara Morgan, John Fong & Darina Norwood

Study and Learning Centre, RMIT University

Gary Pearce

Library Services, RMIT University

Presentation:

Inducting students into academic culture, and academic integrity in particular, is an important part of the welcome we give to our students. This enhances a sense of belonging to the university and to academia in general. When students know what is expected of them and how to achieve it, they are more likely to feel engaged and confident in their learning. This in turn should lead to higher performance and satisfaction as well as increased retention.

This presentation /workshop by the SLC and Library will seek to explore why promotion of academic integrity is important. A key issue is how we transition students to academic culture. The workshop will examine responses to academic integrity from the student perspective, including stories from the frontline as reported by the SLC drop-in areas and the Library. Practical strategies for integrating academic integrity into teaching and assessment practices will also be discussed.

Bio:

Barbara Morgan is the Manager of Study and Learning Centre Curriculum Services

John Fong is the Manager of Study and Learning Centre Student Programs.

NAS has provided a unique opportunity for Students across various schools and programs to gain valuable WIL opportunities, hear directly from NAS interns student collaborators about the career ready insights provided by working on NAS projects.

Bio: Janeene Payne

Janeene Payne is currently the Project Manager, Student Experience on the RMIT University NAS Project. Janeene has over 10 years’ experience leading strategic, cross-service projects at RMIT University. She is a versatile professional with a high-level understanding of state and federal legislative frameworks, focusing on equity and diversity. Janeene has extensive implementation experience in developing and delivering improvement projects across key service areas in the university sector. Janeene has the ability to collaborate and communicate with a variety of stakeholders, from university staff and government agencies to Indigenous groups and overseas students.

Bio: Belinda Kennedy

Belinda Kennedy is a lecturer in the College of Science, Engineering and Health at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Belinda has recently joined the NAS Project team as the Project Manager, WIL. Belinda completed a PhD in Plant Physiology at the University of Technology, Sydney. She then held an appointment as a Post Doctoral Fellow in the field of Plant Breeding of pulses at RMIT University. Belinda has broad teaching experience in the Biological Sciences and has completed a number of STEM teaching initiatives for on-campus and off campus programs for students at year all levels. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning. Her educational research studies in STEM have provided her with a clear understanding of the needs of industry and future students in STEM-related areas.

EdMAC: A project-based learning community and partnership program to develop work ready graduates

EdMAC activities in Singapore, Melbourne and with Tiwi Islands students

Dr Amanda Benson and Dr Kate Jenkinson

College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University

Presentation:

The EdMAC suite of programs is all about people: our undergraduate students, their peer mentoring within and between year levels, the mentoring between academic staff and PhD, honours and undergraduate students, the school teachers and school students they engage with, the reciprocal professional development opportunities, and the partnerships between all of these people or ‘stakeholders’.

This presentation will share how three of these programs have been implemented over the last 7 years with approximately 700 RMIT student leaders in varying capacities, 165 schools and over 12,000 school students and their teachers. The programs are:

Dr Amanda Benson and Dr Kate Jenkinson, from the Discipline of Exercise Sciences, designed these programs to provide a transformative experience for students to develop and practice skills directly transferable to the workplace. They have shared educational philosophies built from teaching within secondary schools and universities internationally (NZ, UK, USA) and within Australia. They have been involved in developing and transforming these experiences since 2010, gradually adapting and adding new projects to meet the changing needs of students and employers. They teach into two degrees – Bachelor of Applied Science (Health & PE) and (ESS) and supervise PG and honours students.

A video providing a brief overview of Connect for Success can be viewed onYouTube.

Bio:

Lila Kemlo is currently the Manager of Student Learning Support for RMIT University College of Business. Lila has over 30 years’ experience in learning and teaching and team management in tertiary institutions.

For the past 10 years, Lila has managed and expanded the award winning Student Learning Adviser Mentors (SLAMs) program in Melbourne. In 2009 she developed a customised SLAMs program in Vietnam and is discussing similar programs for International Partnership Universities in China and Singapore.

Since 2011, Lila has successfully developed and implemented the Student Success and Retention Program for the College of Business. This program focuses on intervention strategies to enhance student transition, engagement, success and retention.

In addition to these programs Lila has developed the widely used interactive online Referencing Style Guide. She also wrote a booklet on ‘Working Effectively in Teams’ and contributed to the team development of a manual on “Reflective Practice for Educators: A Beginner’s Guide’.

Lila has been recognised for her contribution to student learning by receiving RMIT Teaching and Research Awards in 2008, 2009, and 2012, and also an Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Citation award and the Ralph Mckintosh medal (2013) for outstanding service to students at the University.

Lila is looking forward to expanding SLAMs across all Colleges as one of the University Strategic Projects in 2017.

Online portfolios for professional educators

Lucinda Strahan and Jan Brueggemeier

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

Lucinda Strahan and Jan Brueggemeier teach Professional Communication Studio and ask their students to create a personal website as a portfolio.

The question we wanted to address: How do third year students from an interdisciplinary media program articulate and showcase a clear and succinct professional narrative as graduates?

We designed assessments to guide students through this process, The portfolio was was the final outcome of this work. Ekaterina set assignments and activities that guide people in establishing and managing a professional online identity from their websites. This approach to online portfolios takes a much more holistic view. The basic premise is that a Google search for a name is an online identity, and the works displayed in that search constitute a portfolio.

Lucinda Strahan and Jan Brueggemeier teach Professional Communication Studio at RMIT University

Collaborative online learning with a network of universities and vocational colleges in the USA

Howard Errey and Lisa Dethridge

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

RMIT has a formal partnership to foster collaborative online learning with a network of universities and vocational colleges which are part of the State University of New York (SUNY) COIL Network. COIL enables connection and collaboration between educators across a wide variety of disciplines with institutions around the world. As well as providing introduction and connections for collaboration, COIL at RMIT also provides support for coordination and the online delivery of cross university student collaborative learning.

Bio:

Lisa is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media and Communications specialising in writing for new electronic media.

Howard is a Senior Coordinator Digital Learning in the College of Design and Social Context.

Peer review 2017: sharing inspired teaching

Garry Allan and members of the Peer Review Online Working Group

Office of Dean Learning and Teaching, RMIT University

Presentation:

Peer review is an important and compulsory element for teachers (in higher and vocational education) wishing to apply for individual RMIT Teaching Awards, and for academics aiming for promotion. Two reviewers observe a colleagues teaching practice and write independent reports that are included with applications. It is a time for teaching practitioners to demonstrate the strength of their engagement with their student cohort, and the variety of skill and knowledge that facilitates and enhances student learning.

So how do you best prepare for a peer review, whether you are a reviewee or reviewer? How can you best demonstrate/report on the dimensions of teaching which are key to the process? And with online peer review being introduced in 2017, what changes in method will this involve for you as a reviewee or reviewer?

These questions will be discussed by a panel of experienced reviewees and reviewers. We will also discuss the subtle thread of inspiration (and professional learning) that emanates from the peer review process. There is a beneficial bi-product that is often spoken about by reviewees and reviewers, which is the cross-pollination of ideas that is implicit within the process. This takes the forms of feedback from experienced colleagues that triggers improvement in the reviewee’s teaching, and the ideas for exceptional teaching practice that are shared across the university when reviewers observe colleagues from different disciplines. Our panellists will share their insights on peer review and the teaching that they both aspire to, and are inspired by.

Bio:

Dr Garry Allan, is currently the Acting Deputy Dean Learning and Teaching, and in this role has responsibility for the implementation and evaluation of University-wide learning and teaching initiatives. In recent years he has focused on the establishment of strategic and systematic processes for the deployment and lifecycle management of learning technologies at RMIT. Additionally, he has been instrumental in the formation of peer review at RMIT from his involvement with the 2011 ALTC project on Peer review in online and blended learning environment, and the subsequent establishment of the formal Peer Review process at RMIT.

Bridging the gap between the workplace and University for international students at RMIT through mentoring

Judie Kay, Sofia Ridwan and an international student

Students Group, RMIT University

Presentation:

Careers and Employability at RMIT has implemented a suite of Industry Mentoring Programs which connect students to an industry mentor.

Program evaluations have identified positive outcomes from mentoring as well as secondary outcomes including students gaining work integrated learning placements and employment from their mentoring connections.

International students were over-represented in the program, with 40% participation compared to 15% representation in the student population. At least 12% of international students have gained employment, a volunteering opportunity, paid work experience or an internship and 36% have received a professional referral or invitation to an industry networking event through mentoring.

Consequently, mentoring may provide a valuable mechanism to erode intractable barriers for international students in engaging with Australian industry.

This presentation will focus on the program outcomes and the individual experiences of international students who have participated in the Melbourne Career Mentoring Program.

Bio: Judie Kay

Judie Kay is Assistant Director, Careers and Employability at RMIT and President of Australian Collaborative Education Network ( ACEN ). Judie is responsible for the development, delivery and implementation of a broad range of RMIT employability strategies and the provision of employer engagement activities and initiatives.

Bio: Sofia Ridwan

Sofia Ridwan manages RMIT’s suite of Industry Mentoring Programs, with the goal of improving student experience and providing meaningful opportunities for RMIT alumni. Since starting at RMIT, mentoring has grown significantly with over 1,500 students benefitting from a mentoring partnership.

This presentation will provide an overview of how C4S identifies students at risk, proactively contacts them via telephone, and provides valuable and timely support resources and services to students. A key focus will be the combination of a data driven and continuous improvement approach to student identification, development of accurate triggers and meaningful referrals, and the immeasurable impact of a human touch/voice as distinct from an automated email or other digitised response.

Whilst the cost of making calls is greater than the cost of large scale digital communications, the need and value of a personal phone call to many students, particularly those from LSES backgrounds suggests that a multi-faceted, multi-channel approach to student support is an appropriate strategy to continue to pursue and develop.

The presentation will include a unique aspect from those on the front line – the Connect Assistants, who provide the peer to peer interventions (phone calls), and who undergo positive developmental changes in the process themselves.

Bio:

Darren Brown is currently the Manager of Student Transition for RMIT University, leading and working into programs including the Connect for Success early intervention program, the First 60 Days preparation and transition framework, and several other initiatives designed to improve student retention, transition and success at RMIT.

‘Global Work Ready’: Enhancing international internships

Alex Wake

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

New funding opportunities for undergraduate students through the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan (NCP) have enabled universities to make student mobility a priority, encouraging more academics to broaden student experiences in global, not just domestic, workplaces. To meet this objective, universities are increasingly adopting initiatives grouped under Work Integrated Learning (WIL), where academic learning is embedded in projects and placements with appropriate industries internationally. This presentation outlines how the School of Media and Communication has been supported with an LTIF grant to better support students who travel independently on international internship. The Global Work Ready project features videos of students, alumni, employers and academic staff, giving a range of advice about how to prepare for and make the most of an international experience.

Dr Alex Wake, Rilke Muir and Dr Marianne Sison, Global Work Ready.

Bio:

Dr Alex Wake is a senior lecturer in the School of Media and Communication. Alex has worked a journalist or journalism educator in print, radio, television and online in Australia, South Africa, Ireland, and the United Arab Emirates. She continues to work as a freelance broadcaster, but teaches full time at RMIT University. She has a research interest in global journalism and journalism ethics. Her Ph focused on journalism education by Australians, outside Australia’s national borders.

Using institutional strategy to drive change: a model of providing student feedback that is useful for learning

Beverley Webster and Melanie Brown

RMIT Vietnam

Presentation:

Unless students action the feedback they are given, it is not feedback. Education institutions consistently find low student satisfaction with feedback. Vice Chancellor Martin Bean places it as a top priority. Deflecting responsibility, academics continue to believe that any information provided on student work is feedback and worse, if students don’t use the information to improve their learning it is their fault.

Previously, many RMIT Vietnam students were not receiving any recognisable feedback until Week eight or later. Current RMIT assessment policy provides vague guidelines for early feedback and is limited to introductory courses. At RMIT Vietnam, a strategic initiative was implemented in where all students in all courses could expect feedback on their progress by the end of week four. Academic development supported the design of feedback activities and included the options of peer feedback, audio feedback and other digitally enabled forms.

Initial data from this institution wide project confirmed the disparity between academics and students where all staff claimed to be providing feedback yet only 11% of students reported having received Week 4 Early Feedback in all their courses. The results in the second semester saw significant improvements with 52% of students recognising receiving Week 4 Early Feedback in all their courses. In the most recent semester this has again improved.

RMIT Vietnam has introduced a Key Performance Indicator where each staff member is to achieve 75% satisfaction that the Week 4 Early Feedback is useful for student learning. This KPI will increase in 2017.

Bio:

Professor Beverley Webster is Vice President Academic at RMIT Vietnam.

Melanie Brown is a Senior Academic Developer in Learning & Teaching.

Facilitating international industry placements in Vietnam

Catherine Peck

Manager of Learning and Teaching, RMIT Vietnam

Presentation:

WIL placement in Asia provides a rich opportunity to gain professional experience in a dynamic industry setting, while concurrently expanding global and intercultural competences. International experience, and the self-development that is typically entailed by sojourn abroad can set a graduate apart from their peers in the job market. At RMIT Vietnam, WIL placement opportunities have recently been opened to students from RMIT Melbourne and around the world on a study abroad basis.

Acknowledging that international placements are complex, a cross-institutional working group of Academic, Learning & Teaching and Careers staff have contributed over a 12 month period to the establishment of a new placement structure in Vietnam. The new placement better meets the needs of both domestic and international students, and is contextualised to suit the Vietnamese industry context. This interactive presentation will introduce three key dimensions of the redeveloped placement. Firstly, the academic framework, which entails personalized learning objectives, negotiated modes of assessment and on site workshops with an employability skills focus. Secondly, the acculturation support for international students that has been built into the placement opportunity through a multidisciplinary intensive course taken on campus after arrival. Finally, the provision of training for industry partners in mentoring and coaching skills by the institution, which is helping to ensure a constructive and productive work placement experience for our students.

Bio:

Catherine Peck is Manager of Learning and Teaching, RMIT Vietnam.

Digital Literacy: What, Why and How?

John Fong and Joslyn Tait

Study and Learning Centre, RMIT University

Gary Pearce

Library Services, RMIT University

Sally Brooks

Careers and Employability, RMIT University

Howard Errey

Digital Learning, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

Digital literacy is increasingly important to student success in both their studies and work. Our workshop will explore the notion of digital literacies and what they mean for you and your students, and how we can help students (and ourselves) to develop these capabilities. We will cover some examples of work in this area across different parts of the University and provide opportunity for sharing experiences and ideas.

Bio:

John Fong is the Manager of Study and Learning Centre Student Programs.

Joslyn Tait is the Senior Coordinator, Curriculum Integration in the Study and Learning Centre.

Gary Pearce is the Library Liaison Manager for DSC area.

Sally Brooks is Manager, Career Development Education, Careers & Employability

Howard Errey is Senior Coordinator, Digital Learning, DSC

Teaching YouTube to Teach

Leigh Blackall and Andrew Robinson

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

Andrew Robinson has been working with Digital Learning DSC to develop a teacher YouTube channel, and to support students in the development of their own channels. Part of this project has been to devise activities and methods that lead students toward a deeper awareness and relationship with their YouTube accounts. Our inquiry asks, can we teach YouTube to teach?

Since February, we’ve been working with a handful of teachers and students over in the School of Fashion and Textiles, trying to get the most out of Youtube and other social media. This work stems from the Fashion Youtube project.

This work has included showing teachers and students how to set up and manage YouTube channels; how to use a smart phone to record effective video; how to produce screen recordings; how to edit video with YouTube; how to add closed captioning; and understanding the networking resources of YouTube. We’ve collected our posts about this work here.

Laura Holmes Brown teaches Computer Assisted Design at the School of Fashion and Textiles. It is a difficult topic to teach when students come with a wide range of prior experience in both the software and computers generally. Laura created a Youtube channel and screen recordings demonstrating the software, serving as a effective teaching assistant.

This session provides a direct voice for students to conference participants, discussing issues relating to international partnership/mobility students. This session will facilitate the development of a greater shared understanding of the student journey across the University.

Bio:

Ms Saskia Hansen is Executive Director International Partnerships and Development, Global Development Portfolio.

The convergence of cultures in transnational education classrooms intensifies the need to possess cross-cultural competencies.

Cultural intelligence (CQ), defined as the ‘capability of an individual to function effectively in situations characterised by cultural diversity’ (Ang and Van Dyne, 2008, p.3), has emerged in business literature as an important factor in effective performance in multicultural settings.

International experience has been found to be an antecedent of CQ using quantitative methods, yet there is a paucity of knowledge regarding the process of how international experience is translated into higher levels of CQ. This shortfall in understanding was addressed using accounting academics teaching in an international environment. This session, which presents the results of this research, has the practical outcome of providing suggestions for improvement in the quality of transnational education

Bio:

Dr Meredith Tharapos

Dr Meredith Tharapos is a Lecturer in the School of Accounting at RMIT University. Meredith has over twenty years’ experience teaching in universities within Melbourne and has had the honour of receiving a number of teaching excellence awards. She also teaches regularly for RMIT in Singapore, and more recently Indonesia. Meredith’s student-centred teaching approach, underpinned by her research surrounding cultural intelligence, is based around the generation of a supportive and inclusive learning environment.

Meredith’s research is broadly concerned with behavioural issues within the field of accounting, and includes educational, cultural and accountability aspects. She recently completed a PhD examining the cultural intelligence of Australian academics teaching transnationally and the challenges they encounter.

Meredith resided for a number of years in the People’s Republic of China and as a result has a unique understanding of the culture and customs of the region. During this time she undertook volunteer work at several not-for-profit organisations. Prior to joining full-time academe, she gained experience in the accounting profession and the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

Analysing data on graduate employment: where are the jobs and what are they?

Fiona Peterson, Ruth Moeller and Kristy MooreCollege of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Adam Rowland and Robbie AustinCareers and Employability, RMIT University

Presentation:

Recent graduates from sample Melbourne universities – in the Communications, Creative Arts, and Business & Management fields of education – appear less likely to be employed than their counterparts in Sydney and Brisbane, according to data available on the QILT site (https://www.qilt.edu.au).

Perhaps there are fewer jobs available in Melbourne; or there may be more part-time and freelance work or enterprise formation in Melbourne; or there may be too many graduates in Melbourne for the jobs available; or graduates in Melbourne may be limiting their search to particular types of jobs; or graduates in Melbourne may not be adequately prepared or motivated for the jobs available and emerging.

Patterns need to be examined to inform future-oriented program and course design, curriculum development, pedagogy and extra-curricular activities, if we are to continue to offer our graduates the RMIT competitive edge for employment opportunities.

A team including School of Media and Communication, Careers & Employability, and DSC College will demonstrate a range of tools and data, highlighting potential applications for Schools in identifying and analysing trends to inform forward planning.

Ruth Moeller is a Senior Advisor, Learning and Teaching in the College of Design and Social Context

Kristy Moore is a WIL Administrative Officer in the School of Media and Communications

Adam Rowland is Manager Employer Services, Careers and Employability

Robbie Austin is Manager Career Operations, Careers and Employability

DVC (EDUCATION) KeyNOTE

Professor Belinda Tynan

Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education) & Vice-President, RMIT University

Presentation:

Tba

Bio:

As of May 9th, 2016 Professor Tynan assumed the role of Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education) and Vice President at RMIT University.

Prior to joining RMIT Belinda was the Pro Vice Chancellor of Learning and Teaching Innovation at the Open University, UK. In that role she provided executive leadership in the areas of learning and teaching innovation. Her previous roles have included Pro-Vice-Chancellor Learning, Teaching and Quality at the University of Southern Queensland, and Director of the research centre DEHub at the University of New England.

Professor Tynan holds an EdD from the University of Western Australia, a MEd in online learning from the University of Southern Queensland, three Post Graduate Diplomas focused on: Secondary Education (ACU); Curriculum (UniMelb) and Higher Education (UNSW). Her Bachelor of Arts was completed at the University of Melbourne in history, music and drama.

Professor Tynan’s research interests are concentrated in the field of educational technologies, academic workload, student voices and academic professional development. She has 70+ refereed publications and is a frequently invited guest and keynote-speaker and facilitator. You can find her work on www.researchgate.net

Belinda has more than thirty years of experience in the education sector in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the European Distance Education Network.

Belinda has also held a number of International and National Leadership roles. She is on the editorial board of two major journals, until recently a non-executive director of the Executive Committee of the European Distance Education Network (EDEN) and FutureLearn (UK); on the board of the Menzies Centre at Kings College, London. She additionally holds a two year appointment as a member of the Polytechnic Quality Assurance Framework (PQAF) External Review Panel for the Ministry of Education, Singapore.

You can also follow her on Twitter: minbrt

FUTURE EDGE – INSPIRING STUDENTS TO BUILD THEIR EMPLOYABILITY

Claire Ward

Students Group, RMIT University

Presentation:

Future Edge is an engaging co-curricular program launched in July 2015 with a growing community of 1400 students. The session will highlight the end to end student experience of this unique employability program based on best practice in Australia and the UK. We will provide a snapshot of the program, how it was developed and the breadth of local and global experiences our students are engaging with.

You will hear directly from students about the impact of their Future Edge journey on their student experience and how we have evolved the program in an innovative way through collecting the voice of the student. We will also highlight how the program has been enriched through collaborating with Vietnam and the inclusion of Education Abroad, Entrepreneurship, mentoring and indigenous awareness opportunities.

Claire Ward is the Student Leadership and Volunteering Co-ordinator at RMIT and a qualified careers consultant who established both the Career Health Check and the innovative Future Edge co-curricular program. Claire has had extensive experience as a careers consultant working to develop students’ employability at both RMIT University and the University of Melbourne. Prior to moving into the careers field Claire worked in recruitment and strategic sourcing across a number of industries in Australia and New Zealand.

Maths Ready Program

Brendan Cooney

Study & Learning Centre, RMIT University

Presentation:

The Maths Ready program which includes the Maths Ready quiz has developed from a third party resource into an in-house diagnostic tool fully integrated into Blackboard, the LMS. The Study and Learning Centre has managed and re-established this program to identify first year undergraduate students most in need of mathematics study support within priority courses and provided support interventions to increase their results by 5% in their assessments.

The program was originally implemented in four courses in the school of Science, Engineering and Health (SEH) in Semester 1 2014 with 1044 students enrolled. By Semester 1 2015 Maths Ready was operating in seven programs targeting 2,306 students, including VE engineering courses. It was extended to the school of Business in Semester 2 2015 targeting the high failure rate of undergraduate Business Statistics students.

This presentation will provide an insight into how the SLC maths team have collaborated with the School of Science, Engineering and Health as well as other stakeholders in implementing this program and the impact it has had on the learning experience of students.

Bio:

Mr Brendan Cooney is the Senior Coordinator, Maths and Science at the Study and Learning Centre (Student Programs). Brendan leads the maths team of learning advisors who provide students with face to face support in maths, physics and chemistry.

Stakeholder perceptions of employability and enhancement of work readiness in a non-placement authentic WIL module

Associate Professor Margaret Jollands

College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University

Presentation:

This presentation reports on outcomes of a large OLT funded project on graduate employability as well as development of a non-placement authentic work integrated learning (WIL) course.

The OLT study explored perceptions of employability of stakeholders and mapped similarities and differences through the lens of the systematic, comprehensive, and adaptable CareerEDGE framework. We found that stakeholders’ conceptions of employability were remarkably similar, independent of discipline and role. However, their perceptions varied significantly in complexity. Employability learning opportunities embedded in curriculum and assessments throughout a program enhanced complexity of students’ understanding of employability concepts.

While work experience is considered the best way to develop employability, there are too few work placements to meet undergraduate demand. An alternative is non-placement authentic WIL. An innovative approach to WIL for final year chemical engineering students was developed using a real project from a local STEM company. Students are co-supervised by the author and an engineer from the company on the project. The students also participate in a variety of bespoke workshops targeted at critical skills. A pre-test of student perceptions of work readiness showed the WIL students initially rated themselves significantly lower on work readiness than students who had completed work experience, but a post-test suggested the gap was overcome after completing the WIL module.

Please see below for a recent paper about the project and the slides as well:

Associate Professor Jollands is Director of the Science Health and Engineering Education Research (SHEER) Centre in the College of Science Engineering and Health and Associate Dean Student Experience in the School of Engineering at RMIT University. She has extensive teaching and research experience. She led the OLT commissioned project Developing graduate employability through partnerships with industry and professional associations in 2014-2015 and subsequently developed a non-placement authentic work-integrated learning (WIL) module for final year chemical engineering students. Her research interests include the work readiness of graduates, project based learning, and how students learn about sustainability.

This presentation will explore the new RMIT Financial Services Practice Firm, which will commence in Vocational Business Education in 2017.

What happens in the RMIT Financial Services Practice Firm?

Students will learn and experience in a simulated workplace environment what will be expected of them when they graduate and enter the workplace. The aim of the Practice Firm is to prepare students (for instance, those in the Advanced Diploma in Accounting) for work placement in Industry after completion of the Diploma in Accounting. The skills, knowledge and experience learned in the Practice Firm will be put into practice and further enhanced when they undertake work placement and graduate and work in Industry in a similar environment to the Practice Firm.

The Practice Firm will commence in Semester 1, 2017 with eleven workplace departments (indicated below) that relate to four programs and eight courses. This will continue to be built upon and implemented in stages progressing towards a full working model incorporating fifteen courses. A bank will act as the business (FSPF) and will be named the “Swanston Banking Group Ltd.”.

In a supervised and simulated workplace environment, participants will learn a variety of skills by working in different departments of the bank, those being:

Financial Accounting and Management Accounting

Budgeting (Master Budgets and Variance Analysis)

Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable

Asset Accounting

Payroll Services

Taxation Services

Sales Planning (Bank Products and Services)

Financial Services Products – Superannuation and Life Insurance

Internal Audit.

To find out more about the RMIT Financial Services Practice Firm, please contact me:

Educational technologies work best when they are transparent. When technology facilitates both communication and collaboration between students; and the enhancement of critical thinking and problem-solving skills, it is at its best.

The challenge is how to create the interaction, engagement and deeper learning in an online course using existing resources and technology, which would in turn also be simple, unobtrusive and cost-effective. This case study examines an online course that uses key technologies to create truly collaborative learning spaces.

Results from the course at the stage are promising. During the semester, the creative work of 70+ students was uploaded to a secure online gallery, which was available only to the students and teacher. Across week three, the site stats registered 34 visitors with 1,930 views as they examined each other’s work. In week 4, the statistics recorded 77 students with 2,181 views. Further refinement and analysis of the online delivery is needed, but thus far the results are indicating levels of engagement and creativity that are notable and encouraging.

The online tools and general design of this course are adaptable across a wide range of disciplines and would work well for both blended and purely online courses. This presentation will demonstrate key examples of the structure, design and outcomes, while also providing an overview of blending real world technologies within an LMS based on Naomi Herzog’s experience of online tertiary teaching in the creative and visual arts.

Bio:

Naomi Herzog

Naomi Herzog is a multidisciplinary practitioner with extensive experience in the arts, commercial and education sectors and has been recognized for her work in program development and design. Predominantly based in the photographic programs within the School of Media and Communication, RMIT, she has taught within VE, undergraduate, and post graduate programs at Swinburne, RMIT and more recently at Queensland College of the Arts, Griffith Univ.

She has served as chair on the board of Experimenta and in her commercial work has specialized in user interaction, online project development and design across a range of applications. She has worked with a range of clients from large corporations such as Cisco and Telstra to small niche organisations such as the Australian Ballet and the Vic Writers Centre.

Contemporary perspectives on literacies tend to understand them as socially-defined competencies necessary to participate in specific communities — the adept use of communicative practices and resources (NCTE, 2013). In academic communities, where ‘academic literacies’ are often cited as necessary for student success, this involves effective use of technologies and communication resources used in the learning and teaching process (Stock, 2012).

The international university welcomes students who come from a wide range of cultural, linguistic and technological backgrounds; however the literacies of their communities of origin are often not the same as those of the academy. This is particularly salient when students are second language users of the instructional language.

How can we support the development of necessary academic literacies without requiring additional coursework to target it directly? One response is to ‘embed’ instruction in such a way that it is encountered in the context of the normal learning program (Gunn, et.al, 2011). A range of strategies have been used to accomplish this, many involving close collaboration between teaching staff and student support personnel.

This presentation will detail three initiatives used to embed literacies development in the first year experience. One involves the development of Self-Access digital resources — another capitalizes on mentoring by trained Peer Leaders — the last uses highly-targeted writing instruction to help students develop texts in their disciplines.

In 2016 I implemented the next generation of technology into undergraduate teaching for STEM subjects in the School of Science (Discipline of Chemistry). This has been facilitated via engagement with the leading Australian Teacher Engagement Manager at Microsoft Australia.

The motivation was to enhance the student teaching and learning experience while offering a single delivery system for lecturers.

The approach enables delivery of lectures through OneNote offering real time annotation of notes delivered directly to student’s personal devices. For the lecturer, OneNote offers a one stop shop for those who use different source materials and all lecture material is available on a OneDrive Cloud.

The initiative was supported by the School with funds to procure a Surface 4.0 computer. For students there has been a clear improved student experience/engagement as shown by the comments obtained through the Course Experience Survey.

There are a multitude of benefits for the student learning experience including having immediate real-time annotations of lecture notes on any device together with improved student engagement with content via mobility in class. For the lecturer the benefits have included providing real-time annotations, bringing all lecture material in any form (eg. Word, PowerPoint, excel, videos etc…) in one common place using OneNote and providing a flexible environment with fluency.

The approach provides more time at the lectures for problem solving and mobility in class to engage more with the students. This also has the benefit of easily “flipping” the classroom.

Bio:

Dr Sylvia Urban

Sylvia is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Science, RMIT University. She has a PhD (Chemistry) awarded from The University of Melbourne. Previous appointments held at Griffith University and Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand. Research interests continue to be in marine and terrestrial natural products chemistry for natural product discovery. Teaching interests centre on innovative ways to engage students with chemistry. Awarded a Global Learning by Design grant in 2015 to develop engaging industry-based videos to engage with large, first year, student-diverse chemistry classes and in 2016 awarded a STeLRplus grant to publish this work in the Journal of Chemical Education.

The Global Canopy

Patricia McLaughlin

College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University

Presentation:

In this session participants will hear from the students and staff across 6 national universities involved in the Global Canopy project. These students and staff will demonstrate how global perspectives can be built into disciplines as diverse as medical sciences, construction and textiles.

Bio:

Tricia McLaughlin is the chief Investigator on the National Global Canopy project- a category 1 competitive grant commissioned by the Federal Government. Her work in this area involves the integration of global perspectives into discipline curriculum and spans 6 national universities and 200 plus students. The results of this project are available nationally on the Federal Government website.

Using Quitch App to engage students in their learning with Business Statistics

Trevor Kollman

College of Business, RMIT University

Presentation:

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Bio:

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Linking student communication skills development to the CES

Barbara Morgan

Study and Learning Centre, RMIT University

Presentation:

CES questions ask students how well their teachers have explained things, motivated and interested them, understood their difficulties and provided feedback on their work. This practical and interactive workshop examines how the explicit teaching and assessment of communication skills capabilities can impact on course experience survey (CES) results. The workshop will provide participants with accessible strategies and resources to assist teaching staff in engaging their students, providing feed forward and feedback in the development of student capabilities and in identifying and supporting students at risk. The Study and Learning Centre’s Curriculum Services team (staff and students) will showcase their model for embedding communications skills within courses.

Bio:

Barbara Morgan is the Manager, Curriculum Services in the Study and Learning Centre and oversees the work of the curriculum team, academic LEAD peer learning initiatives in the disciplines and flexible delivery via the RMIT Learning Lab. Barbara has worked extensively in academic language and learning initiatives across both sectors. She has considerable experience in online resource development and staff capability building.

Initiatives and strategies to enhance industry engagement with Work Integrated Learning (WIL) at RMIT

Judie Kay and Leoni Russell

Careers and Employability, RMIT University

Presentation:

Australian employers require work-ready graduates to meet the demands of a rapidly changing and increasingly global economy. Work Integrated Learning (WIL) enables the embedding of relevant real-world learning into the curriculum resulting in students being better prepared to enter the workforce. Evidence suggests that students who undertake WIL as a part of their program consistently achieve better employment outcomes. Recent reports indicate that industry is seeking greater support to enhance their involvement in WIL. This workshop will provide

Judie Kay is Assistant Director, Careers and Employability at RMIT and President of Australian Collaborative Education Network ( ACEN ).Judie has extensive experience in Industry engagement and the strategic implementation of University WIL policy, systems and projects in three Universities. She has been involved in national WIL projects including the National WIL Portal, the Leading WIL project and developing resources for WIL partnerships. In addition, Judie represents Australia on the board of the international WIL association, WACE and was awarded the WACE international award for “Excellence in innovation, Entrepreneurship and Commitment to cooperative education and Work integrated learning” in 2015.

Bio: Leoni Russell

Leoni Russell is Senior Educational Advisor, Learning and Teaching within Careers and Employability at RMIT. Her multi-sector experience includes teaching, research, policy and curriculum development, and managing teaching and learning projects and resource development. She provides academic educational support to build staff capability across a range of educational strategies including WIL.

Australia lacks graduates with the quantitative skills necessary for government, industry, and tertiary education. In 2012, the Australian Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb, urged schools and universities to work together to reverse this alarming trend by improving student engagement in mathematics and science classes. The Islands in Schools Project, funded through the Australian Maths and Science Partnerships Program, sought to improve students’ engagement in learning about statistical data investigations using an innovative, engaging and practical synthetic learning environment known as the Islands. The project developed, implemented, and evaluated innovative classroom resources for teaching statistics in years 7 – 10 Australian Maths and Science classrooms. The project involved 12 partnered schools across three states, 73 maths and science teachers, and an estimated 1,900 maths and science students in years 7 to 12. The partnerships and insight gained from this project continue to impact and transfigure the teaching of statistics within the Australian curriculum. This presentation will discuss how the Islands in School Project evolved from an RMIT University STeLR and LTIF grant and eventually into a national project.

Bio:

Dr James Baglin is a lecturer in statistics at the School of Science, Mathematical Sciences, and a full member of the Science, Health and Engineering Educational Research (SHEER) Centre. James completed a PhD in the field of statistics education in 2013, which focused on the role of technology for improving student engagement and learning outcomes. Since then, James has built a strong early career track record of internal and nationally competitive learning and teaching grants. James teaches mainly into online and blended postgraduate statistics course and has won multiple teaching awards. James also acts as the representative on International Statistics Institute (ISI) Young Statisticians Committee for the International Association of Statistical Education (IASE).

MOOCS – new online small business

Liz Eades & Amber Lochland

College of Business, RMIT University

Presentation:

With RMIT’s focus in becoming more global in its partnership reach and innovative learning design the college of business has actively been involved in designing and delivering RMIT’s first massive online open course (MOOC) on the FutureLearn platform. Liz Eades, the project manager and Amber Lochland, the instructional learning designer, will showcase RMIT’s journey through developing the Online Business Success Program that consists of four courses:

Planning for Success

Profiling for Success

Pricing for Success

Digital Marketing for Success

Take a look at the course video below – the first of the courses within the Online Business Success Program. This course will be used as part of the presentation.

Associate Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning – School of Global, Urban and Social Studies and a senior researcher – Centre for Urban Research. Martin teaches into Bachelor of Environment and Society and the Master of International Urban and Environmental Management. He authored an international Introduction to Sustainability textbook (2015) and has research interests in social, cultural and political transformations, global climate change and other major global challenges.

Associate Professor Martin Mulligan

SLAMs: Our mentoring program is finally coming your way!

Lila Kemlo

College of Business, RMIT University

Presentation:

The Student Learning Advisor Mentors (SLAMs) program is a sustainable and cost effective program providing discipline specific academic peer-to-peer mentoring for more than 80+ business courses and programs in the College of Business. SLAMs will be expanded across the University in 2017 as one of the DVCE Strategic Projects for 2017.

SLAMs operates with over 500 volunteer Business students who have achieved a High Distinction (HD) or Distinction (DI) offering two hours a week for eight weeks each semester to support student learning. Operating from a ‘home room’ SLAMs is open from 9.00am – 5.00pm Monday to Friday. Over 4,000 students each year benefit from this free service.

This award winning program in its 12th year is highly valued by staff and students. Evidence indicates that this form of mentoring actively integrates international and local students in a common cause: assisting students in ‘learning how to learn’.

Mentors and mentees have an enhanced engagement with the university community, increasing motivation and desire to succeed with their academic programs.

We believe that this unique model of academic peer assistance provides an example of ‘best practice’ in the provision of student support services.

In 2009, SLAMs was launched at the RMIT University Vietnam campus in Ho Chi Minh City before expanding to the Hanoi campus in 2011. Both Vietnam campuses are still successfully growing the program.

Discussions are currently underway with International partnership Universities to explore SLAMs support.

SLAMs also support the Student Success and Retention Program. SLAMs are recruited each semester as student advisers. This call-centre style operation sees advisers calling ‘at risk’ and potentially at risk students and engaging them in conversations that lead to changed learning behaviours or referrals to appropriate services for support. This program has had significant effects on both pass and retention rates.

Bio:

Lila Kemlo is currently the Manager of Student Learning Support for RMIT University College of Business. Lila has over 30 years’ experience in learning and teaching and team management in tertiary institutions.

For the past 10 years, Lila has managed and expanded the award winning Student Learning Adviser Mentors (SLAMs) program in Melbourne. In 2009 she developed a customised SLAMs program in Vietnam and is discussing similar programs for International Partnership Universities in China and Singapore.

Since 2011, Lila has successfully developed and implemented the Student Success and Retention Program for the College of Business. This program focuses on intervention strategies to enhance student transition, engagement, success and retention.

In addition to these programs Lila has developed the widely used interactive online Referencing Style Guide. She also wrote a booklet on ‘Working Effectively in Teams’ and contributed to the team development of a manual on “Reflective Practice for Educators: A Beginner’s Guide’.

Lila has been recognised for her contribution to student learning by receiving RMIT Teaching and Research Awards in 2008, 2009, and 2012, and also an Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Citation award and the Ralph Mckintosh medal (2013) for outstanding service to students at the University.

Lila is looking forward to expanding SLAMs across all Colleges as one of the University Strategic Projects in 2017.

(un)fashion

Melissa Delaney

RMIT Link, RMIT University

Presentation:

Student panel presentation by Curatorium members, talking about the collaboration curatorial process and industry engagement with VMAFF and RMIT through the annual fashion and textiles show presented by RMIT Link Arts and Culture. There will also be a performance aspect featuring the best experimental work from RMIT students. This program is mentored by Link staff giving students the platform and scope to develop their skills in art design, photography, curatorial practice, fashion, industry partnership, co-working, presenting workshops and public programs, event coordination, exhibition design, fashion, emerging art forms and leading teams.

About RMIT Link

As part of the University’s Student Experience, RMIT Link’s programs complement the University’s academic curricula a balanced campus life, not only through healthy activities but equally for socialisation and deeper University engagement. RMIT Link contributes to the student experience in building engagement and belonging, in providing learning, skill development and leadership opportunities for students, and in providing student involvement in the development and delivery of RMIT Link programs.

Embedding Career Development Learning (CDL)

Megan Chudleigh, Lisa Williams & Adrian Orifici

Students Group, RMIT University

Presentation:

With a strategic focus on RMIT students being ready for life and work, a rapidly changing workforce and changing employer expectations, it is more important than ever to help our students to build their career management skills and knowledge across their program. This presentation will provide you with some strategies for embedding CDL into Programs and showcase learning and teaching resources that will help you to further develop your students’ employability from day one of their studies.

At the presentation a supporting website www.graduate-careers.com will be introduced. The Career Management website aims to increase staff knowledge of Career Development Learning (CDL). It covers everything from the principles of CDL to program design, and offers a step-by-step approach on how to integrate career management skills into the curriculum.

For teachers, dynamic tools are available, as are teaching tips, interactive activities, videos, references, and links to external resources which can be used in the classroom. Assessment types to support CDL are also available and marking rubrics for some activities are suggested.

Bio: Lisa Williams

Lisa Williams is a Careers Consultant in the Careers & Employability department of the Students Group. Lisa’s key role involves working with program teams to embed Career Development Learning into the Curriculum. She is also a member of the Learning & Teaching Innovation Team. Lisa has extensive experience in coaching students on industry placements to help them develop their employability by designing strategies to improve career outcomes. She also has broad experience in delivering career development services within a range of educational settings.

Bio: Megan Chudleigh

Megan Chudleigh is currently an Educational Adviser/Designer working in Careers and Education. She comes with 20+ years experience across academic, career management and WIL functions with specific experience in curriculum development and program design. She has extensive experience in delivering career management skills to students and has developed and supervised numerous WIL placement and WIL online experiences. Megan has experience in working with both domestic and International environments having coordinated offshore courses, partnerships and international placements for students.

Looking beyond traditional approaches, this paper describes aspects of the digital and physical third space of the RMIT Vietnam Library that seeks to strengthen student engagement and library service provision. It is a third space, outside of home and scheduled classes, where students can explore, imagine, think, learn and reflect.

The RMIT Vietnam library includes a digital library as a destination “space” to transform the library experience. Customised digital subject guides are repositioned into the student online learning space by embedding them directly into the online assessment folder in the LMS. As a result, the usage of the digital guides increased for some courses by 300% as students browse digital content by their second week of semester.

In the physical space, the library is being transformed from being a book storage area into a student engagement space.

In 2016, the Saigon South library hosted a series of student work exhibitions which previously had limited exposure. Repositioned into the library space, these exhibitions are now exposed to over 250,000 visits per year.

In the Hanoi library, newly acquired Vietnamese contemporary art pieces were placed into the library space to effectively engage students with creativity in a different medium. This transforms the student experience of the library as a traditional silent study area into a destination space to fire up the imagination and to refresh curious minds to enhance learning.

Bio:

Clare O’Dwyer is the Head of Library Services at RMIT University Vietnam. The University provides library services in both Hanoi and Saigon South. Appointed in early 2015 Clare was the first expat Irish-Australian Librarian to manage this library service that was previously exclusively staffed by Vietnamese librarians only.

Prior to joining RMIT University Vietnam, Clare was the National Librarian at the Fair Work Commission based in Melbourne. This role managed the employment law library, records and the Richard Kirby Archive. This provided an opportunity to combine her law librarianship skills with her Masters degree in Arts Management.

Clare, an RMIT Business Alumni has had a variety of roles in her career that have included being a Business Analyst for BHP, Business Analyst for Ernst & Young, a Law Librarian in both Victorian and Federal courts, a Business Librarian for the Dairy Industry and in the long ago past a barmaid at Collingwood football games.

Clare strongly believes that all Libraries are exciting cultural institutions that have the ability to transform and enrich curious minds over a lifetime.

Providing a culturally safe environment to Indigenous people

Emily Poelina-Hunter

Indigenous Studies Unit, RMIT University

Presentation:

A range of policies, frameworks and plans have the express goal of redressing the under-representation of Australian Indigenous peoples in the higher education sector. Measures such as section 12 of the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act (2010) and Reconciliation Action Plans provide important frameworks for universities and allow for certain positions to be advertised to Indigenous applicants only.

In this paper I reflect critically on my experiences in applying for scholarships, cadetships, tertiary courses and employment advertised to Indigenous applicants only. In particular, I explore the difficulties of writing statements to argue for my worthiness, demonstrating cultural knowledge, and proving my Aboriginality.

Drawing on analyses by Nakata (2001; 2007), Page and Asmar (2008; 2009) and Moreton-Robinson (2016), my reflection highlights an intense vetting process with an onus on individuals to be accountable on several levels.

But what happens when a university is not accountable to their responsibility to provide successful applicants with a culturally safe environment? To answer this question I interrogate the concept of cultural safety, and ask what steps universities could take to improve their accountability for providing a culturally safe environment to Indigenous peoples. Based on this analysis I recommend a set of specific additions to existing policies.

Bio:

Emily Poelina-Hunter is a new Lecturer in the Indigenous Studies Unit at RMIT. She is a Nyikina woman, whose country is in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Her research interests include the archaeology of oral cultures, cultural safety and Australian Indigenous policy.

Personalising the flipped classroom – a system to progressively monitor student learning

Associate Professor Joan Richardson

College of Business, RMIT University

Presentation:

The following document presents some information and links to resources about the presentation:

The recognition obtained through being awarded an ALTC citation (2011) has ensured that I continue to strive to improve student satisfaction and student engagement through the use of emerging technologies in Digital Literacy curriculum. I have worked extensively with Pearson Education Australia as the principal author for texts, e-texts and multi-media resource libraries since 2000. Innovations include the use of social networking features to enable peer engagement, video and screen capture dissemination vehicles with learning diagnostics and analytics, SMS to disseminate assessment reminders and performance feedback, websites, multi-choice tests and communications sent from the learning management systems to personal mobile devices.

My substantial record of Information Systems (IS) research also includes 6 PhD completions and more than 80 peer reviewed book chapters, journals and conference publications. I present my research publications and professional achievements, such as, accreditation documentation addressing the Skills For the Information Age (SFIA) framework at national and international conferences.

My personal commitment to learning and teaching quality has been demonstrated by my involvement in activities, such as, externally funded projects, publication and Chairing the Victorian branch of HERDSA. I am in the College of reviewers for the HERDSA journal and have participated in an ALTC project, entitled “Web 2.0 authoring tools in higher education learning and teaching: New directions for assessment and academic integrity”.

RMIT Access – Because Access to learning matters

Catherine Peck

RMIT Vietnam

Presentation:

Access to higher learning can be life-changing. Students disadvantaged by learning disabilities or differences face multiple hurdles on the path to successful completion, including emotional, financial, physical and cultural obstacles as well as the challenges of their academic program. Providing an equitable and inclusive learning environment therefore requires a multi-faceted approach and strong cross-institutional commitment.

As a first step, establishing the basic conditions of accessibility around learning materials in the curriculum paves the way for genuinely transformative learning experiences being open to greater numbers of diverse students. RMIT Access, Because Access to Learning Matters, is an initiative the Vietnam locations are implementing across all programs in 2016,

RMIT Access will ensure that content and teaching materials students interact with in the classroom and the online learning environment will by default be provided in digitally inclusive, accessible and disability friendly formats following the principles of universal design. The intention is to demonstrate best practice internationally in fostering an inclusive learning environment, and to inspire pride among our staff and students by defining us as an institution that promotes equity and fairness in everything we do.

Vietnam staff and student perspectives on the initiative and the work involved will be shared, along with an introduction to the access guidelines and strategies in use in Vietnam.

Bio:

Catherine Peck is the manager of Learning & Teaching at RMIT Vietnam, and has collaborated with a cross divisional team to facilitate the RMIT Access initiative across 2016. Catherine is originally from Melbourne, but has worked in adult and higher education contexts in Ireland, Spain, Korea and more recently Vietnam for the past 16 years. She has a background in academic development, teacher education and foreign language teacher training. Her areas of interest and research are focused on discourse analysis and intercultural competence development.

Volunteering to learn, Enhancing the learning in university student volunteering

Dr Rowena H. Scott

College of Science Engineering and Health, RMIT University

Presentation:

Volunteering to Learn is an Office for Learning and Teaching funded project involving four Western Australian universities and Macquarie University. A desk audit of volunteering in universities around Australia, literature review, and interviews with key stakeholders revealed interesting insights about why students volunteer, what they hope to achieve from doing so, what assists the volunteering process and what needs further attention.

An incidental outcome of the research was the finding of how the term ‘volunteering’ is used in conjunction with 73 other terms such as Work Integrated Learning (WIL), placements, service learning, practicum, community engagement, and community service. Research identified eight models of volunteering currently in place in Australian universities, four types of volunteering programs, and three types of student volunteers.

Dr Rowena H. Scott will present findings from the two-year project that was completed in August 2015 and provide a tour of the website. The presentation will share volunteer stories and participants will be introduced to the Good Practice Guides developed for students, hosts, employers and university management and the Good Practice Guides summarising terminology and learning.

Bio:

As an academic in Australian universities since 2002, Dr Scott has primarily worked in learning and teaching development, creating resources and support to academic and professional staff on topics such as benchmarking, active and engaged learning, moderation of assessment, sustainability, community engagement, Work Integrated Learning (WIL), Indigenous cultural competence, transnational (offshore) teaching, and first year experience.

Preparing students to work in yet-to-be-imagined spaces

Khoa Nguyen & Ondris Pui

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT Vietnam

Presentation:

How do teaching staff working within the structures of formal higher education prepare students to work in yet to be imagined spaces and modalities like augmented reality, virtual reality and 3D printing? The field of Design Digital Media is one of many in a state of rapid change due to technological advancement, and learning and teaching in the discipline is necessarily shifting to accommodate the fluidity of these emerging fields of practice. Academic staff are facilitating learning experiences for students in which their own learning is concurrent – inverting the traditional teacher-student relationship. The new dynamic is one of collaboration, experimentation and co-creation in which students and teachers are sharing a journey with unpredictable outcomes. Teaching staff are participants in the experience as much as they are facilitators. This presentation introduces exploratory work undertaken by students and teaching staff in the Design Digital Media program at RMIT Vietnam, and provides an introductory discussion of how assessment and learning outcomes can be approached in fields such as this.

Making sense of the Course Experience Survey (CES)

Angela Kerry, Malcolm McCormick, James Tan & David McLay

Survey Services, Strategy and Analytics Group, RMIT University

Sarah-Jane Terrill

College of Business, RMIT University

Presentation:

In 2016 the Survey Services Centre has been working through several pieces of analysis and research on the Course Experience Survey (CES). This presentation is to report the findings of these pieces of work and secondly to discuss how that information can be used, based on work undertaken in the College of Business

Bio:

Angela Kerry: The Senior Manager of the Survey Services Centre, Angela is in charge of this rabble. When not commanding her troops, Ange likes walking her dog, playing with her kids, and chocolate.

Malcolm McCormick: Like that old leather armchair, Malcolm has been around forever and you never want him to leave. He’s held almost every position it’s possible to hold at RMIT and he’s not finished yet… despite retiring in 2008.

James Tan: Like Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, James is the brains of the outfit. With an unhealthy dedication to 80s Television shows, James can most often be found trolling the troglodytes on social media.

David McLay: David is the new guy you have when you’re not having a new guy. Having been around RMIT in some way or other for almost as long as Malcolm, he joined the surveys team late last year and now holds the coveted title of Cake Monitor.

Sarah-Jane Terrill: Blessed with the ability to speak fluently in the languages of both Data and Learning & Teaching, Sarah-Jane brings the contextualisation to the presentation. Just remember it’s pronounced Terrill like terrible and not Tirrill like tickle.

The existence of national frameworks to guide universities on ethical research with Indigenous people has grown from a history of ethically dubious enquiry in Australia. This presentation argues that although the establishment and development of such frameworks is meritorious in the pursuit of a more ethical engagement between universities and communities, the implications of institutionalising these frameworks can at times result in unethical consequences.

In this session, we share some of our experiences as research students, and those of other researchers,who have found the ethics processes placed upon us by the institutions governing our research to result in situations which could be characterised as neo-paternal, disrespectful, and subsequently unethical. This collection of experiences paints a picture of the challenges that arise in the interaction of different social systems regulating ethical behaviour – those operating through bureaucratic, neoliberal systems of legal accountability – and systems of indigenous custom and expectation.

These experiences reveal a gap between the aims of national frameworks for ethical research and the outcomes that occur through their implementation and administration at the university level. We argue that a greater focus on Elder and community knowledge in the development and implementation of these frameworks could limit the occurrence of unethical situations which will otherwise continue to arise.

Bio:

Aleryk is an associate lecturer in the School of Education at RMIT University. Prior to this he worked in the Equity and Diversity Unit based at the city campus and used his background as a primary and secondary school teacher to run the I Belong engagement programs for Indigenous students. He is a proud Dja Dja Wurrung man and is studying as a full-time PhD student at RMIT University. His research is focused on examining the impact of AFL football on the engagement with school for students in Papunya, a remote community in the Northern Territory.

David is casual teaching staff for the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT and the School of Social and Political Sciences and Culture and Communication at UniMelb. David’s research interests focus on Indigenous Sovereignty, First Nations politics and social movements, and Settler Colonialism. His PhD research with GUSS (RMIT) examines political opposition from First Nations activists and Elders to inclusion in the Australian Constitution.

PLANNING AN ONLINE COURSE

Andrea McLagan, Angela Nicolettou & Emma Yench

Digital Learning, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:If you’re designing a blended or online course, course maps are a visual and collaborative way to bring teams together to plan its delivery. The maps involve taking an in-depth look at a course—who studies it, who teaches it, what it’s about, and how it’s delivered and assessed. In this hands-on workshop we’ll look at an example course, and the types of online activities that support an engaging and robust online delivery.

Andrea is a Senior Coordinator, Digital Learning Design in the DSC Digital Learning Team, and has over 10 years experience in online education. In her current role she supports academic staff to develop and deliver technology-enhanced learning, include blended and wholly online undergraduate and graduate education, as well as massive open online courses (MOOCs) for FutureLearn.

Angela Nicolettou

Angela is the Manager of the Digital Learning Team in the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University. Angela has over 20 years experience in higher education, leading numerous curriculum design teams, lecturing, program management, academic development and learning design. Current research interest is in ‘slow’ learning and teaching practices for online education.

Emma Yench

Emma has worked in the University sector up and down the eastern seaboard for most of her life, including more than 12 years in Educational design. Those 12 years have spanned a wide variety of applications and a multitude of disciplines from Economics to Engineering, Statistics to Psychology, Organisational Relations to Orthoptics.

INCLUSIVE ACCESS – SNAP MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Gina Solakis and Victoria Smith

Students Group, RMIT University

Presentation:The School Network Access Program (SNAP) is a 15 year partnership between RMIT and over 200 of the most disadvantaged secondary schools across metropolitan and regional Victoria. The program has been developed with the specific aim of creating and supporting educational aspiration, awareness, a sense of belonging and access for students from low socio-economic status backgrounds (low SES). In this presentation we will examine:

how I Belong addresses the perceived and real barriers to higher education, careers and professions amongst low SES schools, students and communities.

how the SNAP Access Scheme, the principal mechanism for increasing enrolments from low SES students, has shown strong growth and impact. We will look at who gets in, what they study and if they stay and succeed.

I Belong programs feature peer modelling and engagement, through the contribution of current SNAP champions, who are RMIT students who came from SNAP secondary schools. SNAP champions will speak to their insights and experiences at the presentation and through a short video showcasing I Belong. RMIT teaching staff that develop and deliver workshops will speak about their experiences.

CREATING A SAFER COMMUNITY – A LEARNING AND TEACHING COLLABORATION

Ruth Liston

School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Laura Ricketts and Lisa Negri

Students Group, RMIT University

and RMIT criminal justice students

Presentation:

RMIT’s Safer Community Unit was established to manage complex cases of concerning or challenging behaviour which may pose a risk to the safety and well being of members of the University. By managing incidents of concern and highlighting systemic issues, Safer Community aims to prevent further incidents and maintain RMIT as a safer environment for study and work. An outline will be provided of the strategies employed by the Unit to respond to and manage safety concerns.

In Semester 2, 2016, Safer Community Unit is welcoming the opportunity to work with academic staff and students from the School of Global Urban and Social Studies in criminology to inform, plan and propose safety initiatives at RMIT. It is envisaged that this is a long term plan, and will develop over three years. GUSS criminologists will outline how they plan to practically apply theory to build a safer environment and foster cultural change. A summary will be provided of these projects, which aim to embed safety initiatives within the RMIT Community though empowerment, education and the integration of research.

BUILDING EDTECH CAPACITY BY USING EWOKS AS CHAMPIONS OF GAMIFIED CHANGE

Jake Heinrich and Kristof Van Houdt

Centre for English Language, RMIT University

Presentation:As the Centre for English Language (CEL) Vietnam contemplated a foray into the digital teaching and learning space, the need for capability building was front and centre. The challenge lay in a jagged profile of competency in our educators’ digital capability and in generating motivation to adapt to a new educational environment. The solution was to gamify mandated professional learning through Star-Wars themed points, progress and awards systems – all tidily connected to institutional mechanisms such as work plans and promotional pathways.

Blast off was achieved through using the momentum inherent in the technology adoption lifecycle developed by the technology advisory firm Gartner. In CEL’s model, virtual ewoks serve as the currency to motivate staff to attend sessions, submit practical applications from the sessions and then contribute digital resources to a repository. Ultimate achievement is recognised through the award of Jedi Knight Status and, back on earth, pizza vouchers.

The identification of 6 key areas of digital capability was through a needs analysis involving interviews and focus groups as well as the compilation of digital learning personas that gave us a student perspective of the user experience.

Competency in a minimum range of digital teaching and learning techniques and methodologies is the goal, Star Wars is the vehicle, through a change management lens – or lightsaber.

Bio: Jake Heinrich

Jake Heinrich

Mr Jake Heinrich, Head of the Centre for English Language Mr Heinrich is responsible for leading the Centre of English Language in its mission to provide English language instruction for students on a higher education academic pathway. He joined RMIT Vietnam in 2016 from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where he led the transition of ABC International’s range of education products into digital commercial offerings in key overseas markets. He also led the development of digital English language learning content on Australia’s largest education social media platform.

Previously Mr Heinrich worked as an Executive Director for Kaplan Higher Education in Vietnam, establishing twinning and collaborative partners to deliver higher education products and pathways with local partners, and as Business Development Director at ILA Vietnam where he managed the overseas study centres and business school. He has also lectured at the University of Queensland, delivering the International Diploma of Language Teaching Management in China, Vietnam and Australia.

Mr Heinrich’s teaching background is in English as a second language; he has taught in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Cambodia and Vietnam. Currently Mr Heinrich’s interests are in technology in education and particularly in language teaching, where he leads a team of educators in developing and implementing digital content and digital pedagogy across English language learning programs. Qualifications: BA, MEd (TESOL), Queensland University of Technology; MBA, RMIT.

Bio: Kristof Van Houdt

Kristof Van Houdt is the Edutech Coordinator in the Centre of English. He received a master’s degree in digital technology, communication and education from the University of Manchester, UK, a Master’s of Education in ESL from the College of New Jersey, USA, and a DELTA from the University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, UK.

Kristof Van Houdt

A FLIPPED CLASSROOM APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF PHARMACOLOGY – A STUDENT CENTRED APPROACH

Professor Emilio Badoer

College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University

Presentation:

HACKATHON

Facilitated by Leigh Blackall

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

Two days working on questions relating to teaching, learning, education, data and data visualisation.

This event is an opportunity for established and new projects to gain fresh perspective, new talent, connection to like projects, solutions to problems and exposure to wider networks working in realm of teaching, learning and analytics.

The Hackathon will be introduced at this timeslot and then will continue in Building 80, Level 3 Room 1 for the two days. It has it’s own Eventbrite page with further information.

Presentation:The Coherent Online Learning Experiences for Students (COLES) initiative is a collaboration between the Centre of Commerce and Management and the Learning and Teaching team at RMIT Vietnam. It involves the development, implementation and evaluation of an ambitious set of standards for creating a consistent, coherent and interactive learning environment for students in Blackboard. Significant improvements in the engagement of students in their learning have been evidenced.

COLES is based on principles of clarity, flexibility, interactivity and expectations. The design facilitates a blended approach due to its focus on expectation of student action in an expanded online and offline learning environment. As a whole of Centre initiative, coherency is provided through the conceptualisation at the program-level. RMIT Global has minimum standards for the LMS, however in Vietnam, COLES provides much more; a consistent and intuitive navigation structure, clear learning pathways for students to follow, digital resources fully embedded and clarity of expectations in each week or topic.

Extensive support including demonstrations and individual consultations were provided to ensure timelines for conversion were achieved on scale. Impressive statistics of student activity within the LMS and student feedback on the usefulness for their learning of the pathways, activities and resources, all evidence the effectiveness of this initiative on better engaging students in their learning.

This presentation provides a roadmap for implementing and supporting widespread changes in student learning experiences, statistics on usage, student feedback and staff reflections. It is expected to generate discussion of the potential transferability and scalability of such initiatives.

DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES INCLUSION AT RMIT

Lara Rafferty

Equity and Diversity Unit, RMIT University

Mohammad Taha

PhD Student, Engineering, RMIT University

Presentation:With RMIT renewing its commitment to “inclusion” as one of its key values in the current Strategic Plan Ready for Life and Work, this session provides an opportunity to gain an understanding about what this means to students, what they say about how well we are doing, and about our priority actions for improvement.

Some insights from recent consultations with diverse students and teachers, including hundreds of students with disabilities and students of diverse genders and sexualities, will be shared by student and staff co-presenters, along with an overview of some recent demographic shifts in our student profile. These consultations have informed the development of the new RMIT Diversity and Inclusion Framework, and the Action Plans for priority groups. The session will also provide an opportunity to share good practice and discuss implications for teaching, including the resources and other support available for teaching staff.

MENTAL HEALTH IN HIGHER DEGREE BY RESEARCH (HDR) CANDIDATURE

Professor Lisa Farrell

College of Business, RMIT University

Presentation:

According to the World Health Organization mental health is “a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.” Unfortunately, there is a growing body of literature that suggests poor mental health is associated with certain types of education and study. In particular, higher degree by research (HDR) courses of study have been the subject of high levels of anecdotal evidence suggesting that study of this nature has strong associations with low levels of mental health and subjective wellbeing. A long standing subculture exists in HDR education such that poor mental health has been normalised and accepted as part of the process. This subculture has influenced the nature of introductory materials and induction programs for HDR students. We speculate that this is detrimental to both student experience and student welfare. Using innovative survey methodologies such as vignettes and experimental methods we will investigate the anxiety and stress levels of emotive responses to different presentations of the HDR journey, where the presentations are chosen to allow controlled understanding of emotional responses and mood effects. The project will inform on how best to present the HDR journey in a psychologically neutral framework. Such a framework ought to allow for lower levels of stress and anxiety, thus increasing subjective wellbeing within commencing HDR cohorts. This in turn should allow for a more elevated student experience and greater student attainment.

Bio:

Professor Lisa Farrell

Lisa’s research interests lie in the area of Health Economics and Economic Psychology: specifically in relation to risky health behaviours (gambling, smoking and drinking) and behavioural economics (understanding and modelling addiction and the effects of psychology/ personality on economic decisions). She also has a track record in the field of child health and economic welfare issues such as: childhood consumption the impact of welfare systems on incentives for young adults to drop out of school. Understanding health behaviours is essential to sound economic management within the Business of Health. Lisa’s research operates in the space between health scientists’ and policy makers. Her work focuses on how scientific and social science knowledge can best be used for evidence based health policy aimed at actively changing behaviour and improving wellbeing. Current topics of research include ongoing research into health behaviours in terms of addictive behaviours and the choices between sedentary and active lifestyles.

Lisa has published extensively in International A* and A ranked journals which include the American Economic Review (the most prestigious journal in her discipline). Her external engagement includes: being an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Gambling Business, Chief Examiner Economics and Markets, Foundation Studies for Chartered Professional Accountants (CPA) Australian, 2011 onwards and Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) Social and Economic Behaviour (SBE) panel member August –Dec 2010.

In her current role as Professor of Economics within the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT University Lisa acts as the Deputy Head of School (Economics) and also is Director of Markets, Culture and Behaviour Priority Research Area of the College of Business.

CREATING A NEXT GENERATION DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Mark Smithers

College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University

Presentation:

This presentation examines the design principles, strategies, tools and techniques for the development of next generation digital learning environments. It focuses on the use of highly flexible environments that utilise theories of digital habitats and communities of practice and enable learning environments to be created that cross institutional boundaries and enable collaboration and social learning amongst widely disparate groups.

These spaces are centred on the learner experience and a driving factor in their usability is the underlying user agency that they enable. Experience first, in terms of the whole concept. Then:

Mobile first, in terms of delivery.

Open first, in terms of access and integration.

Social first, in terms of learner interactions.

Agency first, in terms of user control.

Standards first, in terms of technology.

Layout first, in terms of content creation.

These new digital learning environments can be built quickly and are based on open source software. They are highly configurable but they do need dedicated teams to drive them and patience and time is needed to build the community. If done well they can provide an ongoing space that encourages lifelong learning and helps build partnerships inside and outside the university.

Bio:

Mark Smithers has twenty six years’ experience working with, and for, universities in the UK and Australia as an academic, consultant and professional staff member as well as experience in private industry.

His focus is on learning and teaching in higher education and he has been involved course development, learning design and innovative learning and teaching practices including problem based learning, simulations, gaming and scenario based learning

For the last twenty one years Mark has worked as an academic, e-learning professional, educational technologist, software developer, analyst and technology manager. He has a wide and deep understanding of educational technology in higher education. He is an accomplished strategist and technologist and has developed solutions for several universities including Swinburne Online, Chisholm Online, Graduate Online Melbourne, La Trobe University, Deakin Prime, the University of Tasmania and RMIT University.

FLIPPED CLASSROOM/ACTIVE LEARNING

Dr Cindy O’Malley

College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University

Presentation:

Hi, my name is Cindy O’Malley and I teach haematology in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences. I have been flipping my classroom for four years and I feel that I am learning more about it each year. I absolutely love it! The classroom becomes a dynamic learning space – students become empowered and ask many more questions than they do in a standard lecture. My students also learn more and do better on the final exam… they A-R-T-I-C-U-L-A-T-E and question their knowledge, they work through problems and try to analyse the material whilst I am there to guide them.

If you don’t have the resources to flip your entire course or don’t have the desire to do so, then you can increase the Active Learning component of your classes and this will also reap benefits for your students. A warning – the technology is not the reason for doing this – it is just a means to an end and should be aligned with course and lesson learning outcomes and I will talk about why I selected various technologies for each of them.

I will briefly mention the pedagogical basis of Active Learning that becomes the centre of the face to face time. But mainly, this session is a hands-on practical one where I will show you some of the active learning exercises that I do with my students. These are all quick and easy to prepare and I will discuss with you how I use these in my classes. Please BRING A SMART DEVICE so you can join in and respond and engage with the material.

What do my students think? The video below, made as part of the Model Activities for Inclusive Teaching Project, explores their experiences:

For those of you that I met last year during my sessions as the Teaching Innovations Fellow for SEH, please come along – there should be something new for you to see! For those that I am yet to meet – come along and see if I can help you to see the benefits of this approach for your students.

Cindy O’Malley teaches haematology in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences.

Dr Cindy O’Malley

RMIT RECONCILIATION ACTION PLAN: WHERE TO FROM THE LAUNCH?

Stacey Campton

Ngarara Willim Centre, RMIT University

Presentation:

This session will be a presentation on what has been undertaken to develop the RAP and to workshop how RMIT implements the considerations and commitments of the RAP. Great opportunity for all to get a background understanding of how the RAP was developed and to also contribute to how and why we enact, embed and take up the actions of the RAP going forward.

Presentation:A presentation with a pragmatic focus on what will be workable in Universities.

Bio:

Professor Peter Scott is Assistant Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Technology Sydney.

Peter was previously the Director of the Knowledge Media Institute of the UK’s Open University.

He has a BA & PhD in Psychology. Before joining the Open University in 1995, he taught Psychology & Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield, with a textbook in each of these subjects. From 2007-10 he was elected founding President of the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning.

From 2008-12 Peter was the coordinator of STELLAR, the EU’s 7th Framework Network of Excellence in TEL. Peter’s research group in the institute, prototypes the application of new technologies and media to learning.

Presentation:This session will focus on creative ways overcome the problem of scale and increase engagement in large class environments. Using examples from her own large class of 2100 students annually, Jaclyn will talk about her use of ‘Intelligent Agents’ (automated emails) and SMS to track down and respond to student engagement, participation, and achievement that can be used to improve student retention. She will also focus on feedback for assessment as an important mechanism by which students can improve their work and make adjustments. Particular focus will be given to the audio and video feedback and how they can enhance the quality of feedback given to students. Lastly, Jaclyn will speak about her use of a Live Chat widget within her unit’s LMS site, discussing how it has increased student engagement and provide timely support to students.

Bio:Dr Jaclyn Broadbent specializes in large class teaching, annually teaching more than 2100 students at Deakin University. She is a Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, and a Leading Educator for the learning management platform D2L. Jaclyn is passionate about delivering high-quality, challenging and supportive learning experiences for students, and has won several awards, including an Australian national learning and teaching citation for outstanding contribution to student learning, and a D2L Teaching Impact Award.